Alex Ott Named Story Factory Production/Development Veep

EXCLUSIVE: In its first major executive hire, The Story Factory has named Alex Ott to be Vice President of Production and Development. Ott joins after spending eight years at David Ayer’s Crave Films, where he sheperded and received co-producer or executive producer credits on the Ayer-directed Suicide Squad, End Of Watch, and Fury.

Shane Salerno’s production/literary management company will be making several hires to facilitate an expansion coming after a high volume of major publishing deals, as well as movie and TV deals on a slew of bestselling novels. Salerno, between co-writing Avatar sequels with James Cameron and scripting the live action adaptation of the video game Gears of War for Universal and producer Dylan Clark, has been handling The Story Factory negotiations himself.

“After a long search, I’m very happy to welcome Alex Ott to the company,” Salerno said. As we begin phase two of the company’s strategic growth plan, Alex brings formidable skills in both development and production that will be a tremendous asset going forward.”

The Story Factory which has a number of films moving forward, including The Force, an adaption of the Don Winslow bestseller about corrupt New York City Police detectives which is being adapted by David Mamet for Logan‘s James Mangold to direct, and Winslow’s Mexican drug cartel bestseller The Cartel is being prepped for Ridley Scott to direct early next year. Fox is behind both of those films. Also on the slate is Steve Hamilton’s bestselling series The Second Life of Nick Mason, which is at Lionsgate with Nina Jacobson and Salerno; Marcus Sakey’s Afterlife, with Brian Grazer and Ron Howard’s Imagine Entertainment producing with Salerno; and UNSUB at CBS for series with Salerno executive producing with Carl Beverly, Sara Timberman and Liz Friedman.